


Standstill

by Repeatinglitanies



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don’t copy to another site, Dubious Consent, F/M, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:34:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28026348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Repeatinglitanies/pseuds/Repeatinglitanies
Summary: Five didn’t feel like a Monster as much as he did at that very moment
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	Standstill

Five didn’t feel like a monster as much as he did at the very moment he made his way back to his room after a mission.

The funny thing was that he had just come back from slitting a father’s throat in front of his son. Sure, said father had killed countless other children, not even once making the connection that the victims he had dispatched were other people’s children. But if all those moralists and philosophers were right, what Five did was, at the very least, considered “not right.”

He should at least feel at least a modicum of sadness at the whole situation.

But the problem was that he didn’t feel a shred of guilt or regret. Five supposed it just wasn’t his way. He didn’t waste time on recriminations on what he could have done to prevent what other people would have deemed a tragedy.

All Five felt was impatience. To think that on his first mission he had been so excited to be out of the mansion, to show Dad and everyone that his genius and effort had yielded the best results, to have everyone acknowledge that he was the best.

Now, all he could think of was how soon he could get back home. 

The traumatised boy had some of his father’s blood on his face. Five registered that brief moment of shock and disbelief. He counted the seconds until the boy connected what he saw to its logical conclusion. 

When the tears and what others perceived to be gut-wrenching wails came, Five was only left unsurprised. It wasn’t the first time he had killed someone in front of a loved one. And in terms of the interval between witnessing an assisted passing (an execution or an assassintation, if that was what others preferred to call it) and the realisation that what once was a living being was now a corpse, the son’s cries for his father was nothing unsurprising or out of the ordinary. Not a beat too soon or too late. Then again, Five’s frame of reference was from an immediate cry to a state of shock that lasted hours, even days.

Which meant that people grieve differently. And there was in fact no set time to start.

All in all, just a normal mission for a member of the Umbrella Academy. Or whatever passes for normal in a family of individuals born with extraordinary abilities and raised as child soldiers for some vague notion of saving the world.

So no. It wasn’t what he had done for the sake of the mission that made him feel like a beast. 

Five had never done anything he regretted ever. When he decided on a course of action, he thought it through carefully and meticulously, down to the last detail.

But that was then. Before Vanya prepared to leave the mansion to pursue her dream. She wanted to get her degree in music on a different continent, a distance that Five’s powers could not reach. At least, not yet.

He knew he should be happy for Vanya. After all, Five valued independence. Wasn’t he the first to try (though ultimately fail) to achieve something astronomical without (and even in direct opposition to) Dad’s guidance?

Five had been obsessed with time travel and attempted it at thirteen. He managed to jump forward by about two weeks. 

But at the cost of a detached hand. Apparently, there were certain immutable physical laws that couldn’t be broken without cost. And those laws wanted to teach him a permanent, unforgettable lesson.

Five was able to bring his hand back to the mansion, with his metaphorical tail between his legs. Reginald was able to re-attach it. 

Five eventually regained the use of it. But from then on, he’d feel an ache if he even contemplated time travel.

Though if anyone asked him, the thought of having to beg Dad for help was more painful than any operation and arduous recovery process. He’d rather feel that chronic ache rather than ever re-live the utter horror and humiliation he experienced while on his knees begging for the old man to give him back use of his hand.

It went without saying that he stopped directly challenging the old man from then on. That didn’t make him Dad’s loyal pet like Luther was and still is. If Five knew that the old man would disapprove, he’d more likely do something before asking permission. 

But the problem lay when Reginald expressly forbade him to do something, such as leaving the Umbrella Academy. Five, at thirteen, would have ignored Dad. But the Five who almost paid a steep price for disregarding the old man’s words was a creature changed by the experience. 

It might not have taken him long to get help to reattach his hand. But those few minutes of uncertainty, of the thought that he would never be able to use it again were enough to haunt him. 

And the whole time, he could hear Dad’s voice telling him: “I told you so.” 

And his own saying: “I should have listened.”

From the on, when Reginald forbade him from doing something, Five couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. At least, not openly.

He didn’t know what he would have done if Vanya wasn’t beside him almost every step of the way towards recovery.

So Vanya going off on her own should be a happy day. He knew that this was what she’d always wanted. What she’d been striving for all those years of lonely violin practice.

Dad wanted her to stay at least within city limits, get higher education at a local university. Five was under no illusion that Reginald Hargreeves was doing this out of fatherly concern. More likely, Dad was reeling at Allison and Diego’s defection. When they had turned eighteen, Numbers Two and Three couldn’t get away fast enough. 

Klaus was...Klaus. His refusal to use his powers to its full potential already disqualified him as an active member of the Umbrella Academy. His use of drugs just made him plain useless in the Dad’s eyes. 

And Ben was making his own plans to leave.

Which meant that Reginald wanted Vanya to stay close just so he could maintain as much power as he could over whichever children he had left.

And yet, and yet, even though Five knew that Vanya leaving was what was best for Vanya. A part of him couldn’t help but wish she would stay. 

Vanya had been the only one who cared about him. And the thought that she would be somewhere he couldn’t immediately reach pained him. She was as much a part of him as his hand. So he knew that he would feel her loss keenly. 

She claimed that she would call him every day. But Five knew better. Distance would surely create a gap between them. And having a new life Five couldn’t share would keep them further apart until they became nothing more than strangers.

He was tempted to persuade her to stay.

At the time, he felt a little proud for controlling himself. Instead of dropping to his knees and begging her never to leave him, Five wished her the best. He wouldn’t regret having to prostrate himself to keep Vanya with him. But he didn’t know how he could live with himself if he stood in the way of her happiness.

In hindsight, Five should have been more vigilant. Going on Regnald’s missions meant that the Umbrella Academy accumulated enemies. Ones that held enough of a grudge to wait and then act at the opportune moment once a weakness was detected.

With Vanya being without powers and given more freedom to explore outside the mansion as she grew older coupled with the Umbrella Academy getting leaner with two members less and complacent due to its past glory, a bunch of people managed to kidnap Vanya.

Five didn’t know how he managed to keep a cool head the whole time he didn’t know where Vanya was or what her kidnappers were doing to her. But it appeared that the dam broke as soon as he managed to find the ones responsible. Needless to say, Reginald Hargreeves had to pay a lot of people to keep the incident quiet for the sheer brutality of Five’s actions that day.

Vanya was unharmed. At least, physically.

But she never did leave the house again. In fact, it would be a miracle to find Vanya anywhere near the foyer.

Aside from shutting herself inside the house, Vanya seemed to function normally. At least in the daytime. 

Night was an entirely different matter. 

She couldn’t sleep alone anymore. The first few nights she spent back home, Five would be laying beside her. But when the time came for Five to go off on a mission after dark, Vanya had to be tranquilized in fear that she would harm herself while Five was away.

It took time. But there was improvement, if it could be called that. Now, when he needed to be out for a night mission, she would camp in between his sheets while waiting for him to come back.

A better man would have insisted that Vanya go see a therapist, even when Dad said that it wasn’t necessary. But all Five could do was a half-hearted offer to escort her while outside the house.

And then she started wearing the clothes he discarded in the laundry basket. Vanya said that his smell brought her comfort, especially while he was away. There was no end to his self-disgust when instead of acting like an actual concerned sibling, all he did was stare in awe at the sight of her in his shirt and nothing else.

For both their sakes, Five had tried avoiding her in hopes that it would somehow make him stronger. As if the separation would somehow magically give him the conviction to do the right thing for Vanya. Because Vanya was in a sort of limbo, wasn’t she? And he was no help at all.

If this continued, Vanya would be effectively throwing away a chance at a future. If Five really cared about her, he would actually do everything he can to help her.

But he could never stay away from her for long, even though he knew that going back to being near her vicinity would make things worse.

He lost his virginity to her the first time he did that. All she had to do was take off her (actually his) shirt and guide his hand to her breast. Before he knew it, her hand was guiding his cock into her entrance and he had almost immediately exploded inside her.

On the nights he’d be back for a mission, Vanya would be in his room, greeting him naked on his bed. It didn’t matter to her that he might have been covered in blood, as long as he made her feel good. 

And monster that he is, he was starting not to care whether Vanya could never leave the mansion ever again. As long as she stayed with him forever.

At some point, he realized that they were trapped in some sort of prison even though they could technically leave anytime. A part of him knew that this feeling of safety within the mansion was nothing more than an illusion. A shared delusion.

But it seemed that they had both stopped caring.

He would let her ride his cock and his mouth to oblivion almost as much as she would use the warmth of his body and his mere presence as a shield from what her kidnaping had done to her mind. 

Through it all, Five just felt relieved that she wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. 

It also didn’t hurt that she made him feel good. Or at least, felt some sort of temporary forgetting whenever their bodies joined in such an intimate way. Vanya didn’t mind taking him in front or from behind. If she ever felt discomfort waking up to a leg raised as he pumped himself in and out of her, Vanya never said it out loud. 

With the number of times they’ve done it, Five had thought they’d be tired and bored of each other soon enough. But it seemed he had underestimated their libido, their need for each other.

An offer to draw her picture suddenly had her participating as a naked subject, which then changed to Vanya using her fingers to open herself so that he could see and presumably draw what lay between her legs.

He truly did try to simply draw what was unfolded in front of him. But then he detected the wetness forming. And he suddenly had an overwhelming need to fill that empty space inside her. 

Just like that, all thoughts of art dissipated. 

In the back of his mind, he knew that he was a certified monster for taking advantage of Vanya this way. But as he drew out his tongue to lap at the wetness, he managed to banish that thought away.

He’d reserve a time for regrets later.

For now, he’d happily stay at this in-between moment in time and space with her.


End file.
